--- title: Abby Finkenauer Says Fixing Student Debt Can Fix the Economy description: For 29-year-old Democratic congressional candidate Abby Finkenauer, student loans aren't a personal and political problem. canonical: https://time.com/5442518/abby-finkenauer-congress-elections/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-11-02T01:50:48.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:53:06.468Z article:section: Politics og:title: This 29-Year-Old Candidate Is Focused on Student Debt og:description: "These are the types of issues that just aren't being talked about in D.C." og:url: https://time.com/5442518/abby-finkenauer-congress-elections/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt196eb4acfd24bff8/69893e1c8fd2eefc0535d08f/gettyimages-977568324.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Iowa Primaries og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This 29-Year-Old Candidate Is Focused on Student Debt twitter:description: "These are the types of issues that just aren't being talked about in D.C." twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt196eb4acfd24bff8/69893e1c8fd2eefc0535d08f/gettyimages-977568324.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # For This 29-Year-Old Candidate, Student Debt Is an Issue That's Come of Age > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=2c71e0ac-2dd2-4e13-90dd-ff59b82b7023&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Increasing Burdens of Student Debt [Watch (HLS stream): The Increasing Burdens of Student Debt](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/DXKQfgwy.m3u8) (2:51)  _Published 2018-07-18. Money looks at how student debt is weighing down a generation._  by [Charlotte Alter / Cedar Rapids, Iowa](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter / Cedar Rapids, Iowa Senior Correspondent Nov 2, 2018 1:50 AM UTC  Democratic candidate Abby Finkenauer stands for a portrait on her parent's property in Dubuque, Iowa Monday, June 4, 2018\. (Lauren Justice for The Washington Post --Getty Images) Democratic candidate Abby Finkenauer stands for a portrait on her parent's property in Dubuque, Iowa Monday, June 4, 2018\. (Lauren Justice for The Washington Post --Getty Images) The Washington Post—The Washington Post/Getty Images  by [Charlotte Alter / Cedar Rapids, Iowa](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter / Cedar Rapids, Iowa Senior Correspondent Nov 2, 2018 1:50 AM UTC Unlike many members of Congress, Abby Finkenauer doesn’t own a home. She can’t afford to buy a new car, so she drives a 10-year old Chevy. That’s because instead of making car payments, she puts about $300 a month toward paying off the $20,000 of student debt she’s still carrying from college. She’s 29, a first-generation college graduate, and the Democratic nominee for Congress from Iowa’s 1st district, running to unseat GOP Representative Rod Blum. And for her, the student debt problem is both personal and political, something she hopes to address if her campaign is successful. “There’s a whole generation of folks that are around my age or who are not doing as well as our parents did,” Finkenauer says at a coffee shop in Dubuque before an event with former Vice President Joe Biden. Debt has kept her and her cohort from buying houses and cars, putting down roots, and participating fully in the economy. “Everything is getting delayed right now and, and not because of necessarily folks want it to be, but just the economic reality of it,” she says. Americans carry roughly $1.5 trillion in student debt, and about[ 70% of college graduates leave college](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/03/this-is-the-age-most-americans-pay-off-their-student-loans.html) with student loans to pay off (the average debt load for a bachelor’s degree was a [little over $30,000](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/your-money/student-loan-debt-parents.html) in 2016). But most of those people carrying that debt are recent college graduates, and most of the people who are making debt policy are not. Finkenauer says that massive debt burden is one of the critical economic problems of the 21st century, and most politicians are ignoring it. “These are the types of issues that just aren’t being talked about in D.C.,” she says. “There are not a lot of people sitting around thinking about student loans.” It’s “mind blowing,” she says, that young people can’t refinance their loans the way families can refinance their mortgages. Blum, who has represented Iowa’s 1st district since 2015, describes himself as a “tea party Republican” and was [endorsed by Trump](https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1057106631652196354) in a rally in Iowa and on Twitter. He is 63. If she’s elected next week, Finkenauer will be one of a new cohort of young Democratic representatives who are likely to significantly lower the median age in the Congress. She’ll join Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (also 29) and several other young women candidates running tough races this year, including Katie Hill in California (31) and Lauren Underwood in Illinois (32). That’s why Finkenauer’s campaign is so unusual. Young people are carrying more debt than ever at a time when it’s more expensive than ever to run for office. Candidates without deep pockets or wealthy connections have a hard time mounting a real campaign, and rich [candidates](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/17/us/politics/bloomberg-president-2020-democrat.html) who can self-fund have an advantage over candidates who have to ask for cash. But Finkenauer, who was raised by a union pipefitter-welder and a school secretary, has managed to raise [nearly $4 million,](https://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary?cycle=2018&id=IA01) overwhelmingly from individual contributions. Iowa’s first district voted for Obama and then Trump, and handily re-elected Rod Blum in 2016\. But the nonpartisan[ Cook Political Report](https://www.cookpolitical.com/ratings/house-race-ratings) now has the district leaning Democratic, with some polls showing Finkenauer with a [solid lead. ](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/elections-poll-ia01-3.html) “If you’d told me two years ago that you’d have a Democrat running as a challenger raising that amount of money for an Iowa congressional seat, I don’t think I would have believed you,” says Des Moines attorney and Democratic strategist Grant Woodard. “I continue to be blown away by her fundraising numbers.” Most of the young women running for Congress this year are new to politics. But Finkenauer has served as a state representative from the Dubuque area since 2015\. One of the first bills she introduced [ was a measure](https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ba=HF479&ga=86) to use employer tax credits to help Iowa students refinance their loans. It didn’t pass, and Finkenauer says that a party leader told her it was the first student loan bill he’d ever seen in the Iowa state legislature. “At least it was an idea,” she says. “It just again shows what differences we will hopefully be able to make once there are different people sitting at the tables making the decisions.” Like most Democrats running in Republican-held districts, Finkenauer spends most of her time talking about kitchen-table issues like protecting health care coverage, creating jobs, and protecting [labor unions](https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/government/iowa-teamsters-back-finkenauer-in-1st-district-us-house-race-20170909). But her economic message is tinged with a generational insight that many of her older colleagues ignore. Implicit in her arguments is a message of hope: not just that Iowans can get better jobs, but that young Iowans who left to go to college might be able to come home and put down roots where they grew up. “We tend to skew older than most states in terms of the age of our population,” says Woodard. “But continually in Iowa, particularly in rural Iowa, we’re always asking ourselves how we keep young people here.” It’s not just a jobs problem, she says; it’s that student loans have interrupted the American Dream. Her classmates “want to be able to buy a house to live next to mom and dad and their grandparents and have the kind of life like they had growing up in Iowa.” “People do want to come back home,” she says. “But can you have a job that pays enough to be able to pay off the loans at the same time? Supporters at a Finkenauer rally said her youth is an asset. “She knows what it’s like to go into debt for a degree that we’re told we ‘have’ to have,” says Olivia Calvin, 18, who is studying math and environmental science at Coe College. She was happy to cast her first-ever vote for “somebody who’s actually going to be alive in 2030, to see the \[environmental\] projections.” Older supporters talked about Finkenauers’ working class roots and her familiarity with rural issues. “She’s in a position to be balanced between Iowa’s manufacturing and rural sides,” says Les Bailey, a 71-year old retired welder. “I’d like to see the torch passed.” ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Gracing the cover of Forbes 50 richest self made women, Kaylee Jenner sits on a net worth of about $ 900 million and is on track to dethrone Mark Zuckerberg as the youngest self made billionaire in history. But while Jenner stands as an entrepreneurial success story of her generation, most of her peers are stutled with students debt. But the US nation average of student loans reaching a cool $ 30, 301, the conversation and the burden of student debts has increasingly reached national consciousness. [ MUSIC ] And I talk to people a lot who don't know how much they owed, and are a little embarrassed about having this kind of neuce around their neck. And I think it helps them more that people recognize that it's really common now, about 70 % of students have to borrow to pay for college. That it takes away a little bit of the shame. There's even an entire game show on truTV called Paid Off dedicated to solving this very practical dilemma. Contestants have the chance to battle each other over several rounds of trivia for a chance to payoff their student loans. And in the series' first season, they gave away almost $ 500, 000. But that's just a drop in the bucket when you look at the full landscape. America's total student debt has ballooned from 260 billion in 2004, to almost 1. 4 trillion today. People who borrowed those loans are having trouble paying them back. Almost 6 million are in alternative repayment plans to lower their monthly bills, meaning it will take them longer to pay it off. And bookings found that almost 40 % of borrowers who entered college in 2004, are likely to default on their loans by 2023. Defaulting can be really really serious. The federal has a lot of means to collect that. So, they can take it out of your paycheck or out of your tax return. They can withhold from your Social Security when you'e in retirement. [ MUSIC ] While defaulting on loan payments is the most extreme scenario, a lot of people are struggling. Millennials are well on their way to become the most educated generation to date but also the worst paid. The average salary for adults between the ages of 18 to 34 between 2009 and 2013 was 33, 880 dollars, the lowest since 1980. And the burden of student debt limits choices as well as opportunities, with many young people stunted in their ability to buy homes or start families of their own. So a good rule of thumb is that you shouldn't borrow more for your four years or five years than you expect to earn in your first year. So that's obviously gonna be really different for somebody who's studying, say, engineering or business than somebody who might be studying journalism. 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